By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 10/16/12 6:57pm

Magazine Parties

marthaStewartLiving

Living Like Martha Stewart

We felt as though we had wondered into the pages of Martha Stewart Living—and in a sense, we had.

Gael Towey, the Chief Integration and Creative Officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, hosted a cocktail party last night to kick-off American Made, a week-long event where Martha Stewart honors 15 small, American businesses that make pretty things and delicious food.

An army of well-dressed Martha employees took our wrinkled and soggy  trench coat upon arriving at the West Village townhouse that Ms. Towey shares with Stephen Doyle, her designer husband. We were given a  name tag written in calligraphy by Mr. Doyle and directed to the bar. We stopped on the way to talk cheese plates with an editorial assistant.  Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 4/11/12 9:30am

The Pin Crowd

10 Photos

Real Simple

Adventures in the Pin Trade: Women’s Magazines Find Dame Demo on Fast-Growing Pinterest

There’s a scene in Girls, Lena Dunham’s “voice of her generation” HBO series, where the dweeby Shoshanna sits on the floor of her Elizabeth Street bedroom, surrounded by magazines. Jessa, her worldlier cousin, pulls off her headphones long enough to inquire what she’s getting up to.

“It’s my manifestation board,” Shoshanna explains, “I use it for inspiration. Like when I’m not feeling inspired I just look at it.”

A riff on “vision boards,” an Oprah-endorsed self-help method from The Secret, the pastime signaled her character’s naïveté, of a kind with her pink velour sweatsuit and Sex and the City worship. A scrapbook for the life one wishes one had, the “vision board” has been mocked by everyone from Barbara Ehrenreich to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But aspirational scrapbooking lives on, nowhere more so than on Pinterest, the image-sharing site that exploded early this year to reach more than 10 million users. Read More